Patronymic surname meaning 'son of Adam,' from Hebrew 'adamah' meaning earth or man.
Adams as a given name carries the weight of one of the oldest words in the human linguistic record. The surname Adams derives from Adam — from the Hebrew "adamah," meaning earth or red clay — the name given to the first man in the Genesis creation narrative. Adam himself was so named to signify his origins: a being shaped from the ground.
The surname form Adams, meaning "son of Adam" or simply "son of man," became one of the most common family names in the English-speaking world, carried by figures who shaped history on both sides of the Atlantic. As a presidential surname turned first name, Adams invokes the remarkable Adams dynasty of American history: John Adams, the second president, was a fierce architect of American independence, and his son John Quincy Adams, the sixth president, became one of the great advocates for abolition in his post-presidential congressional career. Samuel Adams stirred the revolutionary fires of Boston with radical pamphlets and organizational genius.
The name also appears in science through the astronomer John Couch Adams, who independently predicted the existence of Neptune in 1846. The practice of using distinguished surnames as given names has deep roots in American naming culture, especially in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when surnames like Jefferson, Lincoln, and Grant moved into first-name territory as expressions of patriotism and admiration. Adams follows this tradition with particular dignity — it is grave, solid, and historically freighted without being grandiose. For contemporary parents it offers a name that feels both classical and pleasingly unusual, a surname worn as a first name with quiet self-assurance.